LIFE IN CHINA DESCRIBED BY WAIKATO GIRL.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18674, 31 January 1929, Page 4

LIFE IN CHINA DESCRIBED BY WAIKATO GIRL.

“ IT GETS YOU, DESPITE LOATHSOME SMELLS AND PERILS," SHE DECLARES

“You seem rather puzzled as to how we can continue to live out here in the midst of so much trouble and strife, and civil and military discord, but in a sense it is something like going to a cinema and seeing something exciting —you go home and all is peaceful.” That is the observation of a Waikato young lady after five years’ residence in China, most of the time on the staff of a large mercantile firm in Shanghai and Newchwang (Manchuria). In a letter printed in the “Waikato Times she gives some of her experiences and impressions. “For the most part, foreigners live in Treaty ports, or on the Yang Tse (one of the largest and most important rivers of the world), or at coastal ports, and always the British Navy (and, more often than not, the Japanese, with a sprinkling of American) has its watchdogs patrolling up and down; even up to Chungking, over the wild Ichang Gorges, go small gunboats. As soon as there are rumours of trouble a general meeting place is arranged, and if anything bad comes along a refuge is taken on a ship of war, and there the refugees stay until some river or ocean vessel can take them away. But nearly always before things get bad enough for that course the women arid children are sent to a place of safety. The percentage of foreigners killed or badly molested during the recent troublous times was very, very small after all. As for the poor Celestial proletariat—from time immemorial they have been accustomed to plague, pestilence, flood, famine and depredations by soldiers; and from all these they seem to emerge with a calm philosophy that to the Occidental mind is almost un-understandable.

“Up and down the Tientsin-Pukow Railway line the tide of war has gone back and forth since 1924 in relentless fashion—first one factor in the ascendant and then another, and as, the armies swoop hither and thither thev loot and burn and rob and murder—to say nothing of the onslaughts of the bandits, which are very many. Folk who can flee do so, to return as soon as the marauding army leaves, and amid the ruins of their poor little mud huts and despoiled fields they set the wheel of 'life going once more. AN ETERNAL SHAME. “ It seems an eternal shame that their marvellous recuperative powers, their unconscious philosophy, and their industry cannot have a more abiding effect. As an instance of what they will do, when 1 was in Nanking there was a most disastrous fire near the International Export Company’s factory, and at least a thousand of these grubbylittle mud huts, sheltering Heaven only knows how many souls, were entirely demolished one appallingly windy night, and quite a number of lives were lost. Two weeks later we went down to have a look at the scene of desolation—and' could not find it. All had been rebuilt, and life proceeded as formerly; it did not even seem to be less squalid. “ China is too colossal a topic for a letter, but no matter what happens it is always engrossing. You loathe its smells, its sad want of hygiene, its extreme heat in the South and extreme cold in the North, and a thousand other things—and yet it ’ gets ’ you with a something that you cannot put into words. Here we Europeans are all birds of passage—all a -gypsying along on Life’s trail, and a big feeling of camaraderie springs up. Y ou can travel from Shanghai to Chungking (1500 miles up the mighty Y ang 1 se Kiang) or to Harbin (just about as far North) and immediately meet folk you know, or you know intimate friends of your own. This is accounted for, of course, by the way in which folk get transferred round-—'tis here to-day, and Lord knows where to-morrow, with many men. Very few are ever station-

ary for more than two years at a stretch, unless it is in Shanghai.

PERPLEXING CALCULATIONS. “ I have twice been to Japan on holiday; we get eighteen days each year. I badly want to climb Mount Fuji} r ama, which is 12,500 feet up, and it takes a considerable time, because often one is stopped by mists and storms. Maybe next year I will take a leisurely trip there. Incidentally, one never expects to a summer holiday here much under 500 dollars (£SO). Unlike in America, the dollar is worth only about two shillings here. It is often referred to as * Dollar Mex,’ that is, the Mexican dollarvllotels are rarely less than 25s per day i dollar or yen currency, of. course), and odd incidentals are proportionately as big. “ But, oh dear, the moneys of China; they are myriad—and accountants must have a perplexing time. Every kind of money value fluctuates every day. Where you in New Zealand have twelve coppers to a shilling and twenty shillings to the pound sterling, we in Shanghai can have from 260 to 300 coppers to the dollar and up country from there sometimes as much as 400 coppers to the dollar and about 1500 cash—you can imagine the. infinitesimal value of the latter. You might get six twentvcent pieces and six coppers for a dollar to-day, and five twenty-cents and forty-two coppers to-morrow. But up in Manchuria one has silver dollars or fengpiao (military dollar notes), which have fluctuated so that we get anything from twenty to at times twentyeight, and even more to the dollar. ’Twas the bane of my existence when I first started housekeeping. Then the Japanese yen is largely used—both gold and silver yen, each with a different value, and a little farther north is the Harbin dollar and the Russian rouble. In Shanghai most commercial transactions are done in taels, which further complicates matters. For instance, we get a sterling salary which is converted into Shanghai taels, and thence into Shanghai dollars—and of course we usually lose all the time now, because the dollar is low. A tael is now about 2s Sd and a dollar is Is lOd. It’s a wonderful country, as I said before. Think yourself lucky you are doing accountancy in a sane country. DIRTY, DUSTY, WINDY, UGLY’. “What a happy Christmas you will have. Think of it; Y'ou will have a temperature of maybe ninety degrees, with daylight till 8 p.m. We shall have darkness at 4.15, and a reading of perhaps something below zero, and snow. Our climate certainly makes one appreciate the thought of Christmas pudding and roast turkey. “Now for a contrast, let me tell you of life in Newchwang, three and a half days’ journey northward from Shanghai, in a grubby little Chinese coasting vessel. Newchwang is the most uninteresting spot, scientifically and topographically, I have ever seen—it is a flat, dirty, dusty, windy, uglvsajt march really, containing a few foreigners, but with a big Chinese population. The thermometer has a work to do in # Newchwang—in summer it often registers ninety-six degrees, and in winter twelve degrees below zero. The river freezes absolutely about the middle of December, and thaws early in April, so there is skating galore, and ice boating-yachts which travel along on skates at sometimes fifty miles per hour. The river is some size, for six thousand-ton boats are going and coming all the summer long. Then, like snails, the permanent residents retire into their shells.

“Soon after I arrived here, I spent a week-end at Dairen and Port Arthur, the scene of the Russo-Japanese War in. 1904-5, and this month I want to go up to Moukden, five hours from here northwards. As to recreation, we have had lots of fun here amongst ourselves—there is quite a good club, with tennis in the summer, and now hockey, golf, and Badminton. Life in China' is not the terrible experience some people imagine.”